“I don’t care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating,” said William Magear “Boss” Tweed, the infamous party leader of the Tammany Hall political machine in the mid-1800s. He knew that real power arose from controlling the nomination process, not the voting process.
After 20 years of campaigning for political hopefuls up and down the ballot, it’s become clear that certain fundamentals of party machinery have enabled Tweed-like dynamics here in Nevada. Enter the closed primary system, in which the parties cherry-pick their candidates and advantage them with endorsements and dollars. The parties’ anointed few almost always win their primary elections.
The system as it now exists not only biases election outcomes; it violates the tenets of representative democracy by squelching the voices and votes of almost 1 million Nevadans registered as nonpartisan or with a minor party who are locked out of our state’s taxpayer-funded primaries — nearly 40 percent of the electorate. Sadly, that electorate for primary elections is already in decline — especially among younger voters. (From 30 percent in 2020 to 26 in 2022 to 19 in the last election). The upshot is that with fewer citizens voting in closed primaries candidates leapfrog into the general election with the support of a small fraction of all registered voters.
We need a better way.
Fortunately, one is close at hand. In fact, it’s a measure the state’s voters have already passed in 2022. It’s called Question 3, a citizen-initiated ballot measure that would abolish closed primaries and institute a nominating process called ranked-choice voting (RCV). In an open primary all voters, regardless of party, select their preferred candidates from any party for each office. The top five vote getters advance to the general election. Because Question 3 is an initiative that requires passage in two consecutive elections, it will become law in 2026 if a majority of Nevada voters opt in this year with a yes.
As far as open primaries are concerned, voters from six states — Arizona, Idaho, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Nevada and Ohio — will vote on whether to opt in.
To those already sold on the benefits of open primaries but confused concerning the mechanics of the RCV process, rest assured: We use RCV every day as expert consumers, from purchasing airline tickets to apples. We enter the marketplace with a first choice, second choice and so on. That’s a simplistic explanation perhaps, and yes, education is always a handmaiden to change, but opening primaries and offering a broad palette of candidates are overwhelmingly worthwhile efforts.
Why? RCV will result in candidates reflecting the voice of the people rather than the increasingly polarized voice of the two dominant political parties. The system has already been adopted in 60 American cities and in Alaska and Maine. Eight-five percent of Alaskan voters said “RCV is simple” after using it in 2022.
And yet. There will always be those opposed to the new. It’s human nature, especially when it comes to that which is concretized around power and money. Yes, there will be objections, the opposition undoubtedly deploying the old canard of “it’s too complex and confusing for the elderly and minorities” — a rejoinder, in fact, which is not only racist, but assumes the worst about the intelligence of the electorate.
“The data shows that voters are smart, when you put an RCV ballot in front of them, they know what to do with it,” said Matthew Germer, an elections fellow at the nonpartisan R Street Institute following the passage of RCV in Maine.
Opposition will come from both sides of the aisle. In Alaska, a repeal initiative is already underway. In Nevada, open primaries and RCV stands to wound the “Reid Machine,” which still wields outsized power in the state almost three years after the death of Democratic Sen. Harry Reid.
But if opposition is party agnostic, so too are RCV’s supporters. Strange bedfellows support RCV, from Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) to Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), along with a growing cohort of lawmakers who also believe that the current system needs fixing.
And what about us? When it comes to innovation and rethinking calcified laws, we in the Battle Born state are among the vanguard: We legalized divorce in 1861, protected a woman’s right to choose in 1990 and elected the first female majority Legislature in the country in 2019, to name a few. We’ve already taken the first step to ensure representative democracy by passing Question 3 once.
I’m voting for Question 3 because I’d like to see my fellow Nevadans, regardless of political persuasion, participate in the election of candidates with the broadest appeal. Question 3, in concert with RCV, will reduce the likelihood of extreme candidacies benefiting from an inherently flawed voting system.
Boss Tweed’s outsized power was enabled by corruption and cronyism that allowed a chosen few to win elections, not reflecting the people’s choice, but the choice of party machinery. While we’ve distanced ourselves from Gilded Age politics, there will always be vestiges of Tweed lurking in the halls of power. It’s time for the citizens of Nevada to be the boss It’s time for the citizens of Nevada to be the boss, to get to do the nominating, not just the voting.
Jane Grossman, a retired management consultant and environmental professional, lives in Reno. She’s an active political, environmental and social fairness advocate.
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